


The Only Certainty in Life

by Eadgyth



Series: Of Wardens, Champions, and Inquisitors [6]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/M, Graphic Description, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:30:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6204367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eadgyth/pseuds/Eadgyth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The duel with the Arishok is torture, a horror that cannot be unseen, and worse than all of Anders' most detailed nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Certainty in Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot, Anders would not leave me alone till I got it down. I may add other drabbles as they come, so the tittle may change, but right now this stands alone. I looked at pics of third degree burns to get the descriptions right in this, so I feel that it is rather graphic.

He grips his staff with increasingly white knuckles. Aveline stands to his right and a step down from him, her face tracking the movements that play out before them. Varric is somewhere in the crowd of nobles behind him and he’s long lost track of Merrill. Fenris is the only one who stands on the edge of the stairs that lead to Viscount’s now empty seat.

Gwyn moves slowly, her left hand is wrapped around her midsection and slick with blood even as it glows softly with a warm light. It takes all of his self-control and most of Justice’s to not run down the stairs to her.

That her spine isn’t served is a small miracle at this point given that she’s still standing after being impaled on the Arishok’s sword. He tracks the bloodied hand leaving her midriff just long enough for her to bite the cork off a draught of lyrium. Anders draws in a sharp breath, knowing it’s her last. The hand returns to her midsection, but it doesn’t glow. It simply rests there, as if it were a ward against further injury.

The battle is a slow motion grotesquery of mounting injury and Anders watches it with increasing horror and panic. It isn’t that the Qunari is in better shape than Gwyn. He’s not. The silver grey of his skin is burned in places, blackened at the edges, exposing violently pink layers of skin, muscle, and in the worst areas bone. His silvered and sheened hair is all but gone and his fingers look blackened with a frostbite that has gone even beyond his skills to heal. And yet the Arishok gives no ground. The Arishok hardly flags. The Arishok is dogged in his pursuit of Gwyn’s life.

Anders has imagined what it would be like to watch Karl be made Tranquil, to see Gwyn suffer the same fate, but somehow this makes those nightmare delightful fantasies. Maybe it’s the immediacy of it? The creeping dread of watching her slowly cut to ribbons before him. The bone jarring realization of his utter impotence in the face of this madness. 

He wants to strangle Fenris for suggesting this contest after the Arishok called Gwyn a basalit-an. He wants to demand that Aveline help her, or that Varric launch a bolt at him. Maker’s mercy, he even wishes Merrill would summon a demon to deal with the Arishok. He wants to do anything but stand there, clutching his staff, a witness her slow and painful death.

Justice is there, watching the display with a detachment that only serves to make Anders more frantic. To the spirit, the loss of her would be insignificant in the face of their cause, even if he is conflicted about the justice of her current predicament. It almost makes Anders choke to think of her as something so small. But the thought is there, as much his as Justice’s, and it cannot be unthought. 

His stomach is in a riot as the Arishok roars, incapable, at this point, of speaking it seems. The sound echoes like something dark and primal, clutching at his innards till he feels like vomiting. Gwyn simply stands firm. As if the sound rolls over her like a gentle wave which she crests with frost and fire twinkling on her finger tips and a half-cocked smile on her lips. Anders takes that smile, narrow and thin as it is, and holds on to it with all the hope he can muster. 

“Hang in there Blondie,” the words, the gruff gravelly voice that speaks them, the weight of the wide dwarven hand at his back as they are spoken, barely register. He cannot afford the movement, the loss of focus it would be to acknowledge them.

Finally, the moment breaks as the Arishok charges.

Everyone seems to draw in a single breath. Everyone holds it till their lungs feel like bursting. Everyone watches like a hawk as Gwyn casts. 

Fire in the face, a searing flesh melting flame. Already the room smells of burnt flesh, accompanied by the rank oiliness of singed fat, but this adds the heavy staleness of death. 

As the Arishok reals back, Anders hears the muffled cries of women and the soft curses of men. They are focused on the distorted remains of the Arishok’s face. The flesh burned down to the skull, the welling of pustules, the smoking remains of an eye. They do not notice the ragged breath that Gwyn takes in, the stumble in her step, the tremor in her hand as she casts one more spell.

This one freezes. A cold so deep that even Anders’ focus wavers as he notices his breath steam. 

His eyes are locked on Gwyn as she puts both hands on her staff and swings.

A clang like steel against steel rings out loud enough to make him wince and the nobles gasp. But then there is a thump and a thud as the Arishok and his head fall in opposite directions.

He is caught in the swarm that surrounds her. The cheering, the clapping, the exaltation so palpable that the air practically vibrates. It is as infectious as it is painful against his frayed nerves. But then he sees her ashen skin, the voided look to her eyes, the sheen of sweat on her brow as she stands rigid and gripping her staff as it was the only thing holding her up. His heart feels like it might stop beating.

Meredith is a buzzing his ears. Orsino is a gnat flitting overhead. He circles a hand about her waist as she continues to stand, wishing he could risk healing her. As the talking drags on, he searches the room until his frantic gaze finds Varric. The dwarf cocks his head towards the door and Anders gives him a barely perceptible nod. 

And then they are moving, he and Gwyn at the center, while the others swirl about them with Varric taking point. They barely make the stairs of the great hall when Gwyn’s strength finally gives out.

Now, he counts down moments. Watching them draw out longer as he walks as fast as he dares and eeks out the smallest trace of healing that might tether her to him. He ignores the confusion of their party and makes Varric’s solid stride his anchor. It draws him on and pulls him out the other side of those long silent moments.

It feels like he’s walked down a bloody lifetime’s worth of stairs when he finally lays her on the hastily cleared desk of her main hall.

“Merrill! Hot water, elfroot, and bandages.”

He is barking orders, trying to hide the tremble in his voice with a clipping crispness.

“Orana! scissors and thread.”

He hears the sharp breaths as he exposes the wound her padded coat kept hidden. He blinks slowly. Drawing in a breath, letting the certainty of her death roll over him as he pulls on his mana and begins to wage his own war.


End file.
